We can’t even do an express railway neither…

(in truth it took me a few baffled minutes to get the joke, though enjoyed the background painting whilst furrowing my brow)

Stunning.

Hope the mystery signed brick will go in along with your own plaque to future humans.

Suspect your daughter may be downplaying things a bit here…

She got the top result possible. Students who achieve First with honours (sometimes written as 1:1) have to be even better than excellent across their entire degree.

Some years nobody on a particular course will do this well, because it is reserved for the exceptional.

Very cool & giving me some inspiration for… stuff.

Momentarily thought they were mailing out hard copies, as they seek a mailing address to check out a book. I get this is likely to comply with copyright obligations, or just because the charity lacks the resources to supply the entire world, but it is a vulnerability should the library be attacked. Suggest users furnish addresses they do not live at - ideally non-residential addresses - addresses of campaign offices of local homophobic & transphobic representatives would work, but so would govt departmental buildings or commercial premises which are used by a lot of people (best to not put some randomer at risk).

YES & YES.

So in ordinary moronland, just back from voting on a metre-long ballot comprising 6 Fascists (mercifully unpopular), 3 NazBols (could fool some), 3 Tankies (quite popular) & 11 assorted others.

Now slinging Jagermeïster & have already mistaken some supposed local hotshot from the arts for a locum parish priest. He’s ever so slightly regretting having asked why I thought he looked familiar.

Gonna regale us with tales from the front?

STOP MAKING ME LIKE YOU SO MUCH ALREADY!!

Which symphony?

Wildly impressed at the homegrown cures.

Anyhow, assume this week’s Witching Hour has struck, as my notifications tell me I missed a reply before it was deleted.

Come rail at us if you need to. Am a reasonably ordinary moron if that helps!!

Something about this feels like the makings of a short story, or collection of them even. Could be a way to divert yourself from rampaging round social media?

If mostly due to hormonal fluctuations, maybe your doctor can tweak them a little to give you a smoother ride?

It would be very rare not to do so.

Most poll results give the margins of error of the method(s) used. No idea if this one did or not, but 2% and 3% don’t seem dramatic enough to not be explicable by margin of error issues.

Would put some of that down to people making errors with checkboxes, comprehension issues & trolling.

But yeah, some people just like conviction regardless of their thoughts on a case.

Beautiful.

Some archaeologist is going to find this one day. Be fun to include a plaque with a message for them (and for anyone who uses it after you).

Easy to let despondence & cynicism override reality, but if it were true that voting does nothing, nobody would put such effort into discouraging us from voting; into confusing us so much that we disengage.

Standing in line to tick may feel too tiny to count, but everything counts, from the mysterious interactions of subatomic particles to your most basic civic interaction with the rest of your nation (voting).

There’s been… stuff.

Otherwise, reasonable inroads on neglected household cleaning & even a tiny bit of admin.

Vis the Xanax/alprazolam, have sometimes found that benzodiazapines taken to manage situations I find threatening (irrationally or otherwise), make my head fight the drug as it gravely fears any diminution in excessive vigilance.

Similar may be true of your collie? Probably a stronger dose will sedate her enough, but could make her more frantic than ever.

Accordingly, consider giving her the alprazolam once the perceived threat has passed. This could let her unwind faster & also to come to associate perceived threats as something to notice, but which she can relax about once they’ve passed on.

Once upon a time I had the belief that such people were merely lacking information. Maybe that they were a little lacking in empathy, but that their positions were primarily a matter of poor exposure to ideas.

I now that though for some that is true, for the overwhelming majority it is not. They back authoritarian views in full understanding of what that entails for their fellow humans, and they like it.

How able are you to evade political violence should it come to your area? Could you get involved with mutual support/defense groups, or form one? People like your team member get away with a lot within civil society, but come asunder should stuff kick off and norms come under strain.

Meantime, be good to yourself. You’re far from alone.

Do you think, maybe, that even if HRT wouldn’t touch the deepest stuff, that it would ease some matters and give you a bit more space?

It hurts to hear your friend is abusive toward you. I hope you can find ways to be as supportive toward yourself as you have been toward others - I get that the idea isn’t always so comfortable if there’s a lot of heavy history, but tending to yourself is the best way to tend to everything around you.

The few that might like the idea are too lacking in power to attempt, and in any case are easy for a flight between Israel & the US to avoid. Can’t even see any of them denying access to their airspace.

He’d also unlikely to be travelling via a regular commercial passenger flight, as Navalny was.

Similar situation here but with clothes moths & carpet beetles. Also very keen to avoid harming the spiders.

Was just vacuuming before getting out the diatomaceous, & noticed far fewer than normal, and last winter there were notably fewer of the big house spiders coming indoors to mate.

Aye, but let’s not reduce plant-based lives to a few leaves of bare iceberg lettuce with occasional cherry tomato.

Rejecting animal exploitation is glorious in itself, and (handful of very rare medical conditions excepting), requires no diminution in sustenance, deliciousness, sensuality & social aspects.

None of these images are lifted from ads or articles promoting steps toward an ever more ethical lifestyle, and if they were they’d be so unsustainable as to be counterproductive. They’re just pushing more capitalism via dodgy beauty standards of the ruling class (with hefty side helping of “you tried that juice fast that one time to get into that dress, you couldn’t possibly go vegan, here’s some nice dead bullock instead, and lashings of drugs & cosmetics tested on animals to mitigate the toll which eaten animal fats take on your body”)

Vegans are as prone to the ease of junky food as everyone else, but let’s not pretend that we’re on undressed fucking lettuce & about it. Though I suppose I too would be cackling mirthlessly about it if I were, whether in a hide-the-pain-Harold way, or more likely, paradoxical euphoria from lack of nutrients & dopamine in the brain.

Yes, but now consider the state of the ladies in the OP who have tomatoes.

Insanity lies beyond the crisis

(actually love tomatoes, but may be faintly deranged also)